Climate, corruption endanger an ancient valley in Lebanon
BISRI VALLEY, Lebanon — On a remote cliff about 20 miles south of Beirut, a late morning sun roused Imad Beainy. He got out of bed, slipped on a pair of shorts and walked to the cliff's edge, lighting a joint as he looked over the fruit groves and wild meadows of the Bisri Valley.
Hewed between two mountain ranges, the valley extends some six miles along a tributary of the Awali river. In the distance, Beainy glimpsed the sun shining off the cream-colored tiles of the 300-year-old Mar Moussa church. Closer to the cliff, sprinkled around a 15th-century Mamluk-Ottoman bridge and the ruins of a Roman temple, lay some 50 other archaeological sites.
Beainy, 51, spoke of them as if they were his own; that this land was not just a home but a way of life. Yet for the last seven years, the valley and its history have been in jeopardy.
Bisri is to be the site of Lebanon's second-largest dam, a proposed mega-project to bring water to Beirut's ever-ballooning neighborhoods. The pressure of such growth underscores an existential threat to the region as governments already on the brink contend with a future in which they can no longer support some of the world's fastest-growing populations.
Water scarcity, climate change and erratic weather systems are likely to
